At last, he thought, at last she’s beginning to get over it.
If I can keep this going, if we can pick up the familiar routine of jokes shared on holiday and tat other tables, or vvstaying in the hotel, or wandering in art galleries and churches, then everything will fall into place, life will become as it as before, the wound will heal, she will forget.
John notices two women, one particularly. Seen on her own, the woman was not so remarkable. He had seen the type on golf courses and at dog shows. No, the striking point about this particular individual was that there were two of them. Identical twins cast in the same mould. The holiday could yet turn into the cure she needed, blotting out, if only temporarily, the numb despair that had seized her since the child died. ‘Give her time,’ repeated the t, ‘give her time. And anyway, you’re both young still. There’ll be others. Another daughter. vv …the woman was staring at him again…giving him a sudden feeling of discomfort. Damn the woman. All right, bloody stare, if you must. The blue eyes continued to hold his…
You see she isn’t dead; she’s still with us. That’s why they kept staring at us, those two sisters. They could see Christine. Suddenly she turned and said to me, in a strong Scots accent, “Don’t be unhappy any more. My sister has seen your little girl. She was sitting between you and your husband, laughing.” Although she’s studied the occult all her life and been very psychic, it’s only since going blind that she has really seen things, like a medium.
The beauty of Venice rose before them, sharply outlined against the glowing sky…the shadow having lifted, now at last is the moment to make love, and he went back into the bedroom, and she understood, and opened her arms and smiled. They went out…’we shall be lost, just as I said.’ Now ill lit, almost in darkness, the windows of the houses shuttered, the water dank, the scene appeared altogether different, neglected, poor, and the long narrow boats moored to the slippery steps of cellar entrances looked like coffins.
A small figure which suddenly crept from a cellar entrance below on of the opposite houses, and then jumped into a narrow boat below. It was a child, a little girl – she couldn’t have been more than five or six – wearing a short coat over her minute skirt, a pixie hood covering her head. She proceeded to jump from one to the other with surprising agility. Then the child jumped again, landing upon the cellar steps, and vanished into the house.
‘Your restaurant can’t be far away.’ Then he saw them. The twin sisters. He watched her bend over the table and shake them both by hand, and because there was a vacant chair at their table she drew it up and sat down, talking and smiling. …he watched…Laura apparently listening while the more active sister held forth and the blinded one sat silent, her formidable sightless eyes turned in his direction.
‘Darling,’ she said, ‘I know you won’t believe it, and it’s rather frightening in a way, but after they left the restaurant in Torcello the sisters went to the cathedral, as we did, although we didn’t see them in that crowd, and the blind one had another vision. She said Christine was trying to tell her something about us, that we should be in danger if we stayed in Venice. Christine wanted us to go away as soon as possible.’
The experts are right, he thought, Venice is sinking. The whole city is dying.
Due to the warning given by the twins, Laura leaves Venice with John planning to follow shortly. Then he saw her. Laura, in her scarlet coat, the twin sister by her side, the active sister with her hand on Laura’s arm, talking earnestly, and Laura herself, her hair blowing in the wind, gesticulating, on her face a look of distress. He stared, astounded‌
A terrible foreboding nagged at him that somehow this was prearranged, that Laura had never intended to catch the aircraft, that last night in the restaurant she had made an assignation with the sisters. Something had gone terribly wrong. Those women had got hold of Laura, played on her suggestibility, induced her to go with them, either to their hotel or elsewhere.
John, whilst looking for Laura and the twins, is informed that a murderer is at large in Venice. A strange feeling of unreality possessed him. Laura was no longer in Venice but had disappeared, perhaps forever, with those diabolical sisters. Then John hears from Laura who is back in England. It was all a great mistake. ‘My eyes deceived me,’ said John, aware that his English was likewise becoming strained. The twin explains. ‘Yvou saw us,’ she said, ‘and your wife too. But not today. You saw us in the future.’
John plans to leave Venice the next day but goes out for an evening stroll. He had almost reached the end of the alley, and the bridge was in sight, when he saw the child. It was the same little girl with the pixie-hood who had leapt between the tethered boats the preceding night and vanished up the cellar steps of one of the houses. This time she was running from the direction of the church the other side, making for the bridge. She was running as if her life depended on it, and in a moment he saw why.
A man was in pursuit‌
John follows the hooded figure into the building. The child struggled to her feet and stood before him, the pixie-hood falling from her head on to the floor. He stared at her, incredulity turning to horror, to fear. It was not a child at all but a little thick set woman dwarf, about three feet high, with a great square adult head too big for her body, grey locks hanging shoulder-length, and she wasn’t sobbing any more, she was grinning at him, nodding her head up and down.
The creature fumbled in her sleeve, drawing a knife, and as she threw it at him with hideous strength, piercing his throat, he stumbled and fell, the sticky mess covering his protecting hands.
‘Oh God,’ he thought, ‘what a bloody silly way to die…’